


Venezuela

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29911194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: Pre-TWB: A football match, an interlude, and what the Freedom Party expected of Roj Blake
Relationships: Roj Blake/Tom Weston (OCM)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: The House Always Sins





	Venezuela

_He met her in Venezuela,  
With a basket on her head.  
If she had met others, she did not say,  
But she’d do to pass the time away...  
He thought she’d do,  
With all the things he knew she knew,  
To pass away the time in Venezuela._

1  
Eventually Roj deciphered what he said: 

“Some of us clean up nice, eh?” There was the accent (‘soomvus cleanoop noiceay’ might have been the literal transcription), and there was the noise in the pub. The other side were probably used to it. Indeed, the Vik was probably quieter than the Works. But to Roj, it was a huge maelstrom of noise with small eddies in which there could be conversation — like the whirlpools in the saucepan of boiling water in which eggs could be poached.  
The Uni XV had lost the match, 14–10, but Roj was able to be philosophical about it. He always enjoyed a good, hard, well-fought rugger match. Before that day, Roj was hopeful that granting permission for the match against Trafalgar Rolling & Milling No. 4 was a sign of a relaxation, how-ever minor, in repression. Ever since the preceding term’s tragedy, the campus had been locked down tight. Before the match, and during it, of course, Roj was sober and capable of formulating political analyses. 

At the moment, having sampled the various real ales stocked by the Vik (some of them noticeably better than others, especially when he observed proper experimental protocol by re-testing), he was not sober. He worked on formulating a historical analysis, slowly, as his best mate Tez stood on 

the nearest table and bellowed out a song apparently about an Auron bulldagger who Sent his sister the clap. 

Roj stared at the plaster bust over the backbar, depicting a sour-faced female with a veil over her hair. Roj methodically searched his memory and matched up that weaned-on-a-pickle image with a First Calendar sovereign named Queen Victoria... which explained the name of the pub. In fact, he’d been looking at the statue, not at all at the man who had spoken. He now turned his attention toward the young man, the fly-half for the Works XV.

“Hullo, I”m Roj Blake.”

“I know,” the fly-half said. “Read it off your denty when you shouted that round.” He, like his four-teen friends, wore a cheap sharp suit, a white shirt, and cuban-heeled boots. Roj got his eyes to focus, and noted that the man was short but too ruggedly built to really be called small. He had sandy hair spiked up with a lot of gel, a snub nose, a soft wide mouth, and wide-apart eyes of a smoky jade colour darker than Blake’s own hazel eyes. 

“As for my name... Mellors’ll do,” said the young man, who was named Tom Weston.

“Good show!” Roj said. “That was quite a match!”

“Aye, I like a scrum... and I think you do too.”

“Gets the blood flowing,” Roj said. As did Tom’s smile.

“What do you do at Trafalgar, then?” Roj asked. 

“Repairs on the big rollers,” Tom said. “It’s all right, it’s interesting sometimes, you have to have half a brain to do it. What do you study, up there?”

“Engineering,” Roj said. “I’m in my third year.”

“Have you got five credits?” Tom asked. “Cash?”

“Of course,” said Roj, who always carried some small change.

“They’ve got rooms upstairs,” Tom said. “By the hour.”

Roj followed him upstairs, unquestioningly although not quite sure why, stopping only to hand five credits to a skinny girl, maybe ten years old, or an undeveloped twelve, who stood at the foot of the stairs. She put the money into a cigar box.

2  
By the time Roj finished looking around the room, and running his finger over the counterpane (apparently it was made up of little bits of cloth assembled in a pattern), Tom had hung up his suit and rigid white shirt in the chifforobe and was down to scarlet bikini briefs and matching socks. Roj decided muzzily that he’d better undress. He had less to remove, just an old pair of corduroy trousers and a jumper with a hole in one elbow.

“Christ!” Tom said after Roj wrestled off his pants. “That’s gorgeous! Reminds me of this Alpha Elite bird gets wed, you see, pure as the driven snow an’ all. And the next morning, she asks her husband, ‘Is that what they call fucking?’ and he says ‘Yes’, and she says, ‘And they let anybody do it? It’s much too good for the common people!’” 

They tackled mutually, and laughed as one of them pinned the other, and then it was reversed, the strength of arms and the heat of strong thighs gripping, hands clutching the bars of the brass bed until they remembered there was something else in range. 

Sport is the cave, Roj thought as he came off against Tom’s hip. This is Real.

“It’s not one of your Alpha tea parties... do it harder,” Tom groaned. “Stroke that cock! Get your hand on my balls!” 

Roj complied. 

“But I wouldn’t ever hurt you,” he and/or the real ale said as Tom drenched his hands.

It seemed odd to Roj to be kissing a rugger (particularly one from the other side) but it felt so delicious, Tom licking his tongue like an ice cream cornet on a hot day. They changed positions on the narrow bed, more languorously now.

Tom got a cramp in his calf, and Roj massaged it out. Then he kept on going, kneading the thick, solid pillars of thighs and an arse so well muscled that Roj could rest his palms in the hollows below each hip. There wasn’t any liniment or anything like that, but Roj didn’t think a backrub would go amiss anyway.

“Yeh!” Tom said. “You’re hard again! That’s why I like the young blokes.”

3  
“Time, gentlemen,” said Dorrit, the landlady’s daughter, as she tapped on the door. 

Roj sat up (he was lacing his boots), gave Tom a last kiss, and sighed. 

“Lucky bint,” Tom said.

“Why?”

“Well, her mum owns the rooms, y’see, so she doesn’t have to be flat-backing in ‘em.”

“She’s just a child!”

Tom shrugged. “Christ, Roj, you sound like you don’t know you’re born.”

“See you again, then?” Roj said, striving for neutrality. It was a lucky break in more ways than one.

Apparently all his friends who said they were going through a stage had been going through a stage. Blake had little in common with the perfumed aesthetes who occasionally sought his atten-tion. He was curious as well as prudent enough to explore away from home — he had never really known any lower-grades. 

Don’t know if I’ll bother if he’s so cold, Tom thought.

“I suppose we might do,” he said. “I don’t have a comm at home, and we’d best not use the public ones, anyone could be listening. You can’t call me at the Works, that’s for damn sure. Where do you lot at Uni live — in a hostel, in lodgings, with your mum and dad?”

“Dormitory,” Roj said. “It”s like a gigantic fishbowl, not much privacy there.”

“Well, there’s no way to get a message. Why don’t we leave it that we’ll come back here next Tuesday, if we can. If not, no hard feelings. Ta then, Roj.” 

“Goodnight,” Roj said. “Mellors?” He pulled a face. “D’you read banned books, then?”

”Only mucky ones,” said Tom. “Oh, all right, my name’s Weston. Tom Weston. But listen,” he said, following an impulse to make himself sound important — and that he would later damn to hell and back — “if you mean the political sort, well, it’s not for me, but I know some blokes who want to change things. I could put you in touch, if you like.”  
Roj sobered up the rest of the way in an instant. 

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like that.” It could be a trap, he thought. But it could be a chance to do something with my life. It could be the start. And you’ve got to have some faith in humanity, or you’re defeated from the off, you might as well give up.

4  
“I’ll vouch for him,” Tom told the man lounging in front of the door to the room in the cellar beneath the haberdasher’s shop. 

“Well, we’re not sure about you, Sunshine,” the lookout said. “Who’re you, then?” he asked Roj. “And what d’you want with us?”

“I’m at FEA,” Roj said. “And I was there when they murdered those protesters. That won’t do. I — we must do whatever it takes to change that.”

“Whatever it takes?” the lookout asked, knocking on the door. “I believe you, thousands wouldn’t. Might as well come in, otherwise the fucking pacifists might carry the motion.”

Inside, the violence remained (barely) on the purely verbal level, as the debate raged about the philosophical justification and/or practicalities of using force against peaceful protest.

An hour later, when they were still arguing, Tom got up and went home. He was bored, and his shift started at 0700. He’d been to just three meetings before, and the only interesting bit was when they asked him to fix the Tariel cell server at the second meeting.

5  
The Westons lived in Gamma District 17-K, or, as they called it, Brent Village. Its remoteness from the town centre had its advantages — it was clean and quiet — and its disadvantages — there was quite a hike to the tram line. One Tuesday night, there was a rare conjunction of the planets that allowed Tom to smuggle Roj into the house.

Mum’s that house-proud, Tom thought. Always a pleasure to muss it up. There’ve been times I’d’ve been happy to get my prick as stiff as her net curtains, right after she’s ironed them.

“Two up, two down,” Tom said. “Let’s go up to the bedroom, quick — my mum’s at the Women’s Institute, Dad’s at the pub — don’t worry, it’s not the Vik! — one of my brothers’s taking a class at the Poly, the other one is walking out with his girl. My big sister doesn’t live here anymore, got wed three months back. So while the cat’s away...”

They tiptoed up the gleaming, dark-varnished stairs, which squeaked. Tom shifted a pile of clothes off the bottom bunk, then took the desk chair (the desk was a board on a couple of sawhorses) and wedged it under the doorknob. 

“Good God!” Roj said. “I didn’t know that people had to live this way!” Tom scowled, but it didn’t take his mind off his objective.

It is not easy performing what Roj thought of as “seventy plus or minus one standard deviation” in a bunk bed, but they both found it enjoyable, in a rushed and effortful sort of way. 

By the time they were no longer alone in the house, they were dressed and seated companionably in the parlour, a blueprint spread over their laps.

“This is the new engineer from work, Mum,” Tom said. “We’ve got a bit of a problem to work out, and we thought we’d put in some overtime... him with the book-learning, me with the practical, d’you see.”

“He didn’t offer you a bite or a sup, did he?” Mrs Weston said. She was thin and pretty, with pinkish ash-blonde hair washed and set at the hairdresser that day. “Honestly, Tom, he’ll think he’s in a house full of barbarians. We’re not that bad at all, Mr...?”

“Collingwood,” said Blake.

6  
“Oh, hullo, Dorrit,” Roj said when she tapped him on the shoulder. 

“Yer mate’s upstairs already,” she said. “He says to go on up.” Roj started to hand her the five big coins, but she said, “No, it’s all taken care of. And he got your supper and all.”

“I remembered to get a corkscrew,” Tom said. He had a bottle of plonk wedged between his thighs and was trying to get it open. Blake offered his help, and in that position he looked so fetching that that wasn’t all he got helped with, so it was later that the question of supper even arose.

“Beef!” Tom said proudly, and there was a sort of playing card of veritable beef on each of the plates on the warming tray, propped up on a lot of broad beans and mashed potatoes and floated on a moat of gravy.

“This is wonderful!” Blake said. “Thanks, love. What’s the occasion? Did you get a Production Quota award?”

“No, that wouldn’t even buy us a pint. I was at the vizzies, and this posh chap sat down next to me. Took me to his hotel, and wouldn’t you know, it was the Grand Empire. Fifty credits he gave me! — he didn’t know that all the time I was stuffing him, I was wishing it was the other way around, just so I could have the full benefit of those sheets. He was over the moon when I let him have an overnighter, no extra charge. Well, except for him having to buy two cooked breakfasts the next morning. And real coffee! All the cream you liked to put in it, from a silver pitcher. You never saw the like — well, I suppose you have.”

Roj clattered his fork down. “I can’t believe what I”m hearing. You sold yourself? You make a habit of it? And then you tell me as if you expected me to accept it? As if you expect me to be grateful to share in your immoral earnings?”

“Might as well be straight, if you can’t go where your fancy leads you,” Tom said. “It’d be like keep-ing a dog and barking yourself.” He threw down half a glass of wine in one swallow.

“For God”s sake!” Roj said. “What’s a man worth, if he doesn’t keep faith? And how do you expect anyone to respect us, if you let your prick lead you around?”

“That’s just being a man, Roj. We just don’t pretend the way they do. It’s their bad luck that we can have more blokes than they can have girls, it’s them that set things up and not us, anyway,” Tom said. 

He was miserable, things had gone so wrong. He thought that Roj would be glad that he shared with him, they were best mates, after all. Viv and me, we talk about our tricks all the time, have a laugh, he thought. I’d never go with him in a million years, he’s too girly, but he’s a good mate.

“I’ve never so much looked at another man since we began,” Roj said. “I wouldn’t! Not with what we are to one another.”

“Well, you never said,” Tom said. He waited for Roj to move toward him, make up the quarrel. 

There was no more wine in the bottle.

Tom couldn’t stand the cold anger radiating from Blake. 

“I’ve got nothing to lose, and you have,” he blurted out. “I’ve half a mind to shop you... for both...” Horror struck him as soon as he heard himself.

“Oh, God,” he said. “Forgive me. Please. I’d do anything, cut off my tongue, not to have said that.”

“Well, you can’t, can you?” Blake said.

After he left, Tom, stolid with misery, ate the remains of two suppers, and two slices of ginger cake and custard.

7  
Tuesday was far enough away from last Friday’s pay packet that there wasn’t much left in Tom’s pocket out of his hundred credits. So the first Tuesday after their quarrel — when Roj had to pre-pare a difficult practical and needed the extra lab time, and the second Tuesday when Roj settled down with a pile of government Blue Books to write a subversive pamphlet — Tom supped his pint at the Vik as slowly as he could, and then went home. 

There was a fine line to walk, Roj decided. They needed to build a mass movement, but to do that required screening out more than the paid snouts and security agents. You couldn’t take everybody who wanted to join. There were the bullyboys, who might just as well reel into a recruiting office as a party cell when the pubs closed. There were the inadequates, who wanted to contract out their suicides and pretty them up with a martyr’s crown as well. Then there was the never-ending talk, talk, talk before anything could get done. But think of how guilty you’d feel to find that someone had died a terrible death just a week after you laughed at him behind his back for being boring.

And the sheer bloody hard graft involved... everything from setting policy for the Outer Worlds to getting in a plate for sandwiches for a late-night meeting of the inner circle. Roj revelled in the flat-tery of, “Do it, please, no one else would be half as good,” even though he knew it meant, “Oh go on, if you don’t, we’ll never find another mug.” He wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t mad, and more and more work rolled off everyone else’s desk onto his, and he tried to do it all but it was more than one man or even one Titan could do, and he was more and more indispensable.

The third Tuesday, when Roj was having dinner with Bran Foster, Tom drank his first martinis. He didn’t think much of them — a load of icy nothing and then a steam hammer in your head the next morning. They were bought for him by a businessman on a three-day conference. Gavin was far too much of a nancy-boy for Tom’s taste, but he was a good soul, and generous with it.

8  
The housekeeper put the casserole of boeuf bourguignon on the trivet and padded out silently. Roj glanced anxiously at the door to the dining room.

“You needn’t worry about Mrs. Thetford,” Bran Foster said, pouring out glasses of claret. “She’s a treasure — been with us for years. And a sympathiser.”

For a few minutes, they discussed some Party business — the success of the leafleting in the tower block in Beta District IV-B; the reputed sympathies of the Education Commissioner on one of the Outer Planets; whether a new recruit was reliable enough to be promoted to cadre. Then Bran Foster sighed and put down his knife and fork, crossed upside-down on the plate.   
“Blake, I suppose you may want to punch me in the face for this, but... well, you know what I’m go-ing to say.” 

Foster remembered overhearing one of his lieutenants saying that Blake was a good man to have at your back... and the answering snigger that Blake might be a good man to have at your elbow, but he for one wouldn’t like to have Blake behind him.

“My personal life is my business, not yours,” Roj said.

“But you see, it can’t be. Paradoxically, those of us in the secret army must live as if we were perpetually in the spotlight.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Roj said, “with your wife and your two children. You’ve got a home — and I don’t mean the tablecloths and the wine cellar.”

“That’s just where you’re wrong, my dear friend,” Foster said. “My family’s not here. I send them away as often as I can, to get them out of the line of fire. I’ve given hostages to fortune, and it terri-fies me. I miss them terribly when we’re apart, but it tears my heart out to look at them and know that I may already have bought them an ugly death. But you’re free, you see. When you graduate, you’ll have your choice of plum assignments — as long as there’s nothing against you, officially. Nothing political, and nothing moral. And that’s when you can really help.”

“How? By lying? What sort of foundation is that to build on?”

“Political, I’m afraid,” Foster said. “If — when — we defeat the Federation, Blake, we’ll need lead-ers. And where are they going to come from?”

“The shop floor?” Blake said, echoing the quarrel that had led to the departure of the latest faction.

“I don’t suppose the Socialist Wankers are much of a loss,” Foster said. “No, Blake, in light of the labour grades’ habit of obedience and the Alphas’ training in command, it’s only natural that the elite grades will provide the leadership.”

“That’s a dispiriting thought,” Blake said. “So all this is simply to wrest power away from the hands of a small part of the Alpha grade merely to hand it to an even smaller part?”

“No, Blake,” Foster said. “It’s to eliminate the greatest evil the world has ever known. And, unfor-tunately, it will require some compromises and some sacrifices along the way. Your surrender of some of your personal freedom, to prevent the entire cause from being discredited.”

“Discredited? Isn’t that a prejudice that should be fought as well?”

“You’ve got to pick your battles. Which are you fighting for — the Millennium that will never come, or the victory that very well may? I think you’re like me, Blake. You’ll give your life if you have to — although you’ll sell it dearly! — but you’re not looking for an altar to immolate yourself on. You and I, we want to win, and we believe that we can.”

“You’re asking me to be alone.”

“To be free from entanglements.”

“To give up the hope of love.”

“Oh, love anyone you like, Blake. I’m asking for... discretion in the expression. I’m asking you to recognise that it’s a luxury in wartime. It has to be rationed in favour of the war effort.”

“But you — and those like you — expect to control the distribution of the ration coupons.”

“Blake, you’re not just another young cadre to me. I suppose in a sense, you’re a surrogate son. If things were different, I’d try to work out a match between you and my daughter. No, don’t worry, I don’t expect that degree of hypocrisy from you! It’s a godsend that you’re an engineer — we’ll need people in government with a sound understanding of technology. The Federation, or whatever re-places it, depends on spaceships, computers, and armaments. We can’t do without you. I can’t do without you. I trust you not to misinterpret it — it’s a confession of love, a confession of need.”

“Oh, I know that there’s more than one way for men to love one another. And in some ways you’ve been a better father to me than mine ever was. But what you’re asking... well, the Gentleman or the Tiger?”

“Precisely.”

And so, starting when he was twenty-one, Power was his lover.

_“Cheer up!” said he,  
“Don’t you know there’ll always be,  
Sailors on leave in Venezuela?”_


End file.
